Flip Flop #15: Stamping

Hello ladies :)  I hope you've all had a lovely Sunday!

I'm now settled in my hotel for the next few days.  It has a four poster bed and it's so high I have to jump onto it.  AMAZING.  I'm suddenly far more okay with being kicked out of my flat for a few days.  I just wish I could have my cooked breakfast now though, yum yum yum.

So for day 15 the choices were Stamping or Jelly Sandwich.  I still haven't tried a jelly sandwich, but I went with stamping because I already had an idea that I'd been wanting to try out.

When I received my stamping plate from Born Pretty Store (you can see the review here) I had the idea of doing multicoloured stamping with the apple image, so that's what I attempted today!  Be warned, this is my first attempt at using more than just one colour!

I used (from L-R) OPI Flick Chick Cherry, Barry M Matt White, China Glaze Manhunt and Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, and the yellow is Rimmel Sunshine.

I'm fairly pleased with this.  I was hoping to get more orange and green between the colours, maybe this could be achieved by changing the direction I was scraping in?  I love the blue into the purple though, I think that looks really pretty :)  I had a little trouble with my scaper though - you can see on my middle finger there's a cheeky little red patch that I didn't quite scrape off.  It's a Konad scraper though so I wouldn't expect to have problems!

Right, well I think I'm going to enjoy a complimentary hot chocolate and read a little more of my book.  I'm sure the novelty of the hotel will wear off tomorrow though lol.

Flip Flop #12: Matte

Helloooooo!  It's Friiiiiidaaaaay!

I have wine, and I have chocolate, and I've just got some wonderful news, so I'm feeling rather great!

A brief aside...there's some program on the telly and they keep showing really close up of him holding things and he's got proper skanky dry skin around his nails and bruised nail beds.  Yuck.  Get yourself a nail blogger for the close ups!

Anyhoo, the choices for Day 12 were Drips or Matte.  I've attempted drips before as part of my boyfriend's birthday manicure (on my nails, not his!) here.  It is something I'd probably like to have a go at doing as a full manicure at some point, but I wasn't feeling it last night, so I went with matte instead.  Interestingly (or not, actually) literally everytime I type 'matte' (yes, even then) I always type 'matter' first and have to delete the 'r'.  Very odd.  I wonder if it's from typing up too many physics things about the interaction of radiation with matter...  Or perhaps from typing 'what's the matter?' every time my teenage sister begins a little rant (I don't know if you actually read my blog Amber, but if you do, I'm joking of course...).

So I've been enjoying chucking some matte top coat over everything recently.  Buuut since it was the theme for this manicure, I felt it should be a manicure that was based around matte-ness rather than just any old manicure mattified.  I'm not sure I'm making sense.

But here's what I did anyway.

I used a Special FX polish that sadly has no name, then topped it with the Rimmel matte top coat.  And THEN...well.  I tried to stamp with normal top coat, but that didn't work.  I thought maybe it was because it was cheap and the formula wasn't great, so I Seche Vite'd all my nails, and then tried to stamp with the matte top coat.  That didn't work either.

SO, I re-matted everything and decided to do dots.  Although by this point I couldn't be bothered dotting all my nails, so I just went for the index and middle finger nails.  The dots were bigger than I intended...I think my little topcoat pool was too deep!  Then on all my other nails I added a stripe of top coat down the middle.  I'm not sure this really shows up in the pictures, but you can see it if you know it's there lol.

All in all, a bit of a faff.  A nice way to have some subtle nail art though, if you're going somewhere bolder nails wouldn't be appropriate :)

I realise I'm not yet caught up with the challenge, but just a little advance notice that I might get further behind next week!  I'm being kicked out of my flat for the week for some building work to be done, so I'll only have a limited selection of my pretties with me.  But I'll do my best.

Layla Bubbly Effect

After lusting after OPI Spotted for however long it's been since it was released, but refusing to pay that sort of money for a polish I wasn't even sure I'd actually like, the other day I bought a Layla Bubbly Effect from Sally Magpies.  By the way, if you've never visited Sally Magpies before, go have a look now!  She imports loads of foreign brands that you can't get in the UK, so that we don't have to pay silly postage costs getting them.

Anyhoo, I bought Layla Bubbly Effect in Black Forest, but it is also available in a few other colours.  I decided to use it over a multicoloured blobby base (technical term there).

So this needs to be applies super thin.  I did my ring finger first, and thought I'd wiped all the excess polish off, but like the brush needs to be almost dry.

The colours underneath are Max Factor Bright Orange and Cactus Green, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and Bright Purple, and Rimmel Sunshine.

I love this look though.  I think it'll look great just over one bright colour as well :)

And here's a close up of the most succesful nail.

This is what the underneath looked like by the way.  I was going to sponge, but then decided that since it was being covered up I could just brush it on.

Did you manage to get your hands on OPI Spotted?  Or do you know of any other dupes?  I've also seen a load of people doing a DIY Spotted effect using water, which looks pretty awesome.

31 Day Challenge - Day 27: Inspired by Artwork

A little while ago, before I started blogging, I posted a manicure on Facebook.  One of my friends commented that I was "getting quite Piet Mondrian", so he seemed as good an artist as any to inspire today's manicure.

This is what I based my manicure on:

And here are the nails!

I was really really pleased with these, but then my topcoat smudged them - argh!

I used a base of Barry M Matt White, added blocks of colour in OPI Cherry Chick Flick, China Glaze Man Hunt and Rimmel Sunshine, before painting on the black lines with a nail art pen.

Have you ever done a manicure inspired by artwork?  Where do you normally get your inspiration from?

Check out all the other arty manicures:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

31 Day Challenge - Day 13: Animal Print

A little while ago, we were at my boyfriend's auntie's house for a barbecue.  Their neighbours have all sorts of pets, and they took us round to see some of them.  They had a few poison dart frogs (which apparently are only poisonous in the wild because of the food they eat) and there was one yellow one, who was sooo cool.  So that little fella is my inspiration for today's animal print manicure for the 31 day challenge (I know it's two days late - sorry!).

I used a base of Rimmel Sunshine, and a black nail art pen for the detail.  My nail art pen was having one of those days where it just likes to gush out, so this all got a bit messy, and ended up being one of those designs that looks so much better in my head...

I'll do my best to get back up to date with this challenge, although..er...I haven't done my floral design for day 14 yet so you're definitely not getting that tomorrow.  Sorry!  I promise to be a better blogger next week!

Take a look at all the other animal print manicures that the girls have come up with:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

31 Day Challenge - Day 9: Rainbow Nails

Hello again :)

Here, as promised, are my super geeky rainbow nails!

A nice little bit of dispersion for you!

For the base colour I used Barry M Grey.  The white was done using a nail art pen, and for the prism I used 2true No. 49.  Then for the spectrum, from red to violet, I used Barry M Bright Red, Max Factor Bright Orange, Rimmel Sunshine, Barry M Spring Green, China Glaze Manhunt and Jessica Ruffled Bottoms.

Next up the challenge is gradient nails *ponders whether or not to do something involving graphs...*

Check out all the other rainbow nails :)  There are some really great manicures today!

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

My Favourite Things: Final Post!

Good evening ladies (and gentlemen?).  Today is the final day in the My Favourite Things challenge, hosted by Kelly over at Ooh La La Polish!  The theme for today was to recreate our favourite mani from the challenge.

I decided to recreate Becca from Horcrux Nails' Favourite Animal mani, because of it's awesomeness.  I do feel this should come with a little disclaimer.  My attempt really does not do Becca's nails any justice - so please check out the original!  Mine looks like a child did it (I'm blaming the lighting...).

Yeah...bit of a mess.  But I love the idea nonetheless!  The green is Barry M Spring Green, and then we've got Barry M Bright Red, Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, a combination of Max Factor Bright Orange and Rimmel Sunshine, and China Glaze Man Hunt.  The black and white are both nail art pens.

And with that, the challenge is over!  Don't forget that if you want to take another look at all the manicures I produced for this challenge, you can click on the Challenges tab at the top of this page :)

My Collection

People sometimes say to me "You must have so much nail polish!".  I always insist, of course, that I don't.  to be fair, it all used to fit in a shoe box.  It doesn't any more, but it's still far less than a lot of people's (I don't yet have a room devoted to nail polish, although I am working on my boyfriend...).

So anyway, I thought it'd be a good idea to photograph my collection so people could see what I have.  And because I was bored.  So here you go - all polish names are from left to right.

OPI 

Not Like The Movies, Fresh Frog of Bel Air, Teenage Dream, Grape...Set...Match, Over The Taupe, Mermaid's Tears, I Juggle...Men

Matte Stripes

Here's a design from a few months ago - my first go using matte polish.

I used 17 Nightshade, and OPI RapiDry and Rimmel Pro Matte Topcoat for the stripes.

Hope you're all having a good week :)  I'm attempting a ship for the final day of the summer challenge on Friday, so watch this space...

Summer Challenge 2: Sunset

Today is the second instalment in the summer challenge hosted by lady_flower123 (check out her blog here), and the theme is sunset.  I decided to try a gradient for my background, and then I drew in (my interpretation of...) the Liverpool skyline.

I used Rimmel Sunshine, Max Factor Bright Orange, 17 Risky Red and Barry M Bright Purple for the background (it seems all the purple ended up on my fingers rather than my nails) and a nail art pen for the silhouette.

Sorry for the late and brief post - I have a migraine and am too busy feeling sorry for myself.